And then shoved a little.

And tripped on her long, flowing skirt, tumbling them both to the tiled floor of the entrance hall.

“Oh my,” Pleasance said. “It’s bad luck to fall when you first enter a house. It disturbs the ghosts.” She sounded excited at the possibility.

“Not bad luck, just women’s bloody ridiculous fashions,” Ned muttered. He stood, brushing a stray thread from his sleek velvet coat and straightening his bow tie.

“Or men’s irrational customs,” Cecilia retorted. Ned reached out a hand and she tsked as she looked at it. “Etiquette demands that a gentleman remove his glove before helping a lady up from the floor onto which he has so recklessly tossed her.”

“I beg your pardon, madam.” Taking hold of the glove’s hem, he slowly slid it forward over his hand, revealing the skin beneath. His eyes never left hers, which Cecilia considered fortunate as it meant he would not see her throat move as she swallowed heavily.

“Er—um—I should just go—” Pleasance stammered, and yet she did not take her presence from the room, nor her wide-eyed stare from the scene before her.

The glove removed, the fingers naked, Ned presented his hand again. Cecilia blushed as she took it. He gripped her own gloved fingers firmly and pulled her to her feet. She swayed a little but he held her steady, touching her nowhere but her hand—somehow making her feel like he touched her all over. Their gazes locked in a highly indecent stare.

“So are you happy, miss?” Pleasance interrupted, bouncing a little, causing Ned to smile tightly and Cecilia to almost giggle. “Do you like your new house?”

“I do,” Cecilia said. “It is most agreeable.”

Pleasance turned her bright, flushed face to Ned. “That’s such very high praise from the miss, sir. You did well.”

“I could not have achieved it without you, Pleasance my dear,” he replied charmingly.

“It was the least I could do for Miss Bassingthwaite. She’s our own true heroine.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Cecilia murmured.

“But you rescued the Society from Northangerland Abbey, miss.”

“Actually, they rescued themselves.”

“You fired the Darlington guns to make the abbey unstable for flight.”

“But it was Jane Fairweather who found the houses in the garden,” Cecilia corrected with painstaking care. “Without her, we couldn’t have gone anywhere.”

“You defeated his henchmen.”

“That was the royal troops, whom Constantinopla Brown organized.”

“But you shot down Captain Morvath!”

“Actually, he crashed into a hillside. And then reappeared tonight at the banquet.”

“Egads!” Pleasance gasped.

“It’s all right,” Ned assured her. “He took Cecilia captive, but—”

“But she wreaked vengeance upon him for her tragically murdered mother?” Pleasance suggested, pointing to the portrait of Cilla, which had previously hung in Cecilia’s bedroom but now presided over this entrance hall.

Ned shook his head.

“She foiled him with her usual cleverness?”

Ned winced.

“The Queen hit him over the head with her tiara,” Cecilia explained. “I’m afraid I’ve done nothing at all to advance the plot.”